Introduction

The SARBayes project uses the International Search & Rescue Incident Database (ISRID) [1] to study and forecast lost person behavior. To augment the predictive power of the project's models, we can supplement sparsely populated fields in ISRID with other sources of data. For instance, given an incident's date and location, we can pull data from online application programming interfaces (APIs) to fill in missing values for weather conditions such as temperature and precipitation.

Introduction

One goal of the SARBayes project is to forecast the probability of survival for lost persons. Such models could be useful in deciding to continue searching, and researchers making motion models can use survival predictions when generating probability maps of the lost person's location. We are analyzing data from the International Search & Rescue Incident Database (ISRID) to describe the probability of survival as a function of various features, such as age or temperature.

Our MapScore paper is now in press at Transactions in GIS! From the abstract:

The MapScore project described here provides a way to evaluate probability maps using actual historical searches. In this work we generated probability maps based on the statistical Euclidean distance tables from ISRID data (Koester, 2008), and compared them to Doke’s (2012) watershed model. Watershed boundaries follow high terrain and may better reflect actual barriers to travel. We also created a third model using the joint distribution using Euclidean and watershed features. On a metric where random maps score 0 and perfect maps score 1, the ISRID Distance Ring model scored 0.78 (95%CI: 0.74-0.82, on 376 cases). The simple Watershed model by itself was clearly inferior at 0.61, but the Combined model was slightly better at .81 (95%CI: 0.77-0.84).

USCG wants a portable infrared WiSAR detector. This RFI was posted on 2-OCT:

The Coast Guard Research and Development Center (RDC) is conducting market research to identify technologies that are suitable for conducting IR searches on foot for persons on frozen waterways. The parameters include detection capabilities of one mile, and recognition capabilities at one-half mile, and identification at approximately one-quarter mile by personnel on foot (monopod is possible). The parameters also include the need to function in extremely cold temperatures, be temporarily submersible, and function regardless of weather conditions or the time of day/night for IR detection.

A logical extension of the Distance Rings model is to fit a smooth function to the distribution of data found in ISRID. Examining the Euclidean Distance data for different categories, it was found that a lognormal curve roughly captured the shape of the data. The Log-Normal (LN) is a two parameter distribution which assumes that the logarithm of your data follows a normal distribution. The probability density function of the LN curve is given by, where are the mean and standard deviation of the logarithm of distance.

Thanks very much to summer intern Jonathan Lee (@jonathanlee1) for many MapScore fixes. Jonathan is a keen Python programmer with extra geek points for running Linux on his Macbook Air and having an ASCII-art avatar. He learned his way around Django in no time and brought us a slew of features and code refactoring including: Continue reading "MapScore Updates Summer 2014"

One of our SciCast forecasters posted an excellent analysis of how he estimated the (remaining) chance of success for Bluefin-21 finding MH370 by the end of the question.

Forecast trend for Bluefin-21 success, on SciCast.

Jkominek was wondering why the probability kept jumping up, and created a Bayes Net to argue that there was no good estimation reason for it. (There may be good market reasons -- cashing in to use your points elsewhere.)